- Bosch agrees to pay $36 million bribe as DOJ declines prosecution in export case
Source: United Press International
“German engineering and technology firm Bosch has agreed to pay a $36 million [bribe] to resolve federal allegations that it exported restricted products and software to China’s Huawei. Federal prosecutors announced the agreement Wednesday, saying the Bosch resolution was the National Security Division’s first declination under the Justice Department’s new corporate self-disclosure policy. The company has agreed to forfeit the $11.4 million in profits it made in the alleged transactions, with a portion being credited against the [bribe]. As a result, the NSD has declined to prosecute the company.” (06/18/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/06/18/Bosch-pays-export-fine/5371781769505/
- Tail Wags Dog
Source: The Realist Review
by Martin Sieff“It should be cold comfort indeed, but the successive inability of one US administration after another to control Israel and the extraordinary passion with which the leaders of Western Europe, Canada and NATO continue to defy the United States to risk thermonuclear world war with Russia at the whims of Ukrainian junta leader Volodymyr Zelensky are not unprecedented. For the dark, universally unacknowledged world history of the past 120 years is clear: Tails Wag Dogs. Global superpowers and great continent-spanning empires are brought into needless total conflict and utter mutually assured destruction by the machinations, betrayals and petty intrigues of tiny postage stamp states — usually with unacknowledged, disgusting and even genocidal recent political histories.” (06/18/26)
- Sound Money, Artificial Intelligence, and the Pope
Source: Cobden Centre
by Max Rangeley“How to safeguard the human person in the time of artificial intelligence? It is hardly a surprise that Pope Leo XIV in answering that question in his first encyclical does not include money as part of the solution. More is the pity. The present unsound money regime has abetted vast malinvestment in the digital revolution now in its AI phase. Malinvestment takes various forms and is driven by mal signalling in capital markets caused by monetary inflation. Alongside the legal and constitutional backbone of the free-market economy falters. The build-up of the surveillance state is one consequence. All of this endangers ‘the human person.'” (06/18/26)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/06/sound-money-artificial-intelligence-and-the-pope/
- “Sit Down, Theodore!” Slang and Spontaneous Order
Source: Liberalism.org
by Sarah SkwireThe other day, I texted my youngest a reminder to take out the trash. In response I received, ‘sit down theodore.’ I was, to say the least, confused. It turns out that ‘sit down theodore’ had evolved as a complicated joke with a friend about the word ‘noted.’ First it became ‘no ted.’ That transformed into ‘stop it, teddy’ then into ‘enough, teddy.’ That morphed into ‘sit teddy’ and finally ‘sit down theodore.’ The joke became so ingrained in their texting conversations that they set the autocorrect feature on their phones to transform the word ‘noted’ into ‘sit down theodore’ whenever they typed it. All of this explained the text I received, but it also got me thinking about one of the most important aspects of a liberal society — spontaneous order.” (06/18/26)
https://www.liberalism.org/p/sit-down-theodore-slang-and-spontaneous-order
- Mandatory Internet IDs
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“An assault on your freedom to use your computer without having to ‘verify your age’ has migrated from states like California, Colorado, and New York to the United States Congress. This is the so-called Parents Decide Act, which would ‘require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system.’ … ‘Save the children’ is the familiar sales pitch, but if government is in charge of saving the children, our children are in trouble.” (06/18/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/06/18/mandatory-internet-ids/
- Lessons from Trump’s Reckless Iran War
Source: The American Conservative
by Doug Bandow“[T]he Blunderer-in-Chief’s disastrous war has at least one silver lining: It inadvertently demonstrated the case for closing U.S. bases throughout the Middle East and bringing American forces home. Disengagement is long overdue, especially for an administration supposedly committed to America First.” (06/18/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/lessons-from-trumps-reckless-iran-war/
- We Must Restore Congress as the Predominant Branch of Government
Source: The Nation
by US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD)“You will hear no more disorienting or self-defeating a platitude uttered on Capitol Hill in this 250th year of the American journey, by politicians of either party, than the sixth-grade dogma that America has ‘three co-equal branches of government.’ That ‘co-equal’ thing is confected nonsense. To begin with, if it is a real word at all, ‘co-equal’ is a mediocre concoction whose lackadaisical users cannot even decide whether it should be hyphenated. By adding the gratuitous prefix to the indispensable stand-alone word, which the Declaration of Independence applied to people, ‘co-equal’ establishes a confusing false equivalency among institutions, making it seem as if the framers wanted the three branches to be involved in a perpetual game of rock-paper-scissors with no apparent preference for actual progress toward a more perfect union.” [editor’s note: Ironic that this do-nothing Congressthug is writing this screed; if he and his colleagues ever bothered to pass a competent bill he might have some standing – SAT] (06/18/26)
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/congress-constitution-jamie-raskin/
- Europe Refuses to Spend on Defense. That Means America Needs to Stop Defending Europe
Source: Cato Institute
by Doug Bandow“Rather than telling Europe how much to spend on its defense, the Trump administration should begin a phased military disengagement from the continent.” (06/18/26)
- Petty and Idiotic Immigration Tyranny in the World Cup
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“I can’t help but wonder whether advocates of America’s socialist (i.e., central planning) system of immigration controls and the vicious immigration police state that comes with it are proud of how their system is being used against the Iranian soccer team that is competing in the World Cup games here in the United States. All three soccer games in which the Iranian team is competing are being played inside the United States. But with their socialist system of immigration controls, U.S. officials wield the omnipotent power to determine who enters the United States and under what conditions.” (06/18/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/06/18/petty-and-idiotic-immigration-tyranny-in-the-world-cup/
- California’s Insane “Prove You’re Gay” Law
Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter“I challenge you to prove your sexual orientation. Go! Not sure how to do that? Good, because I don’t really want to know what you might come up with to prove it, any of it, in any direction. Plus, I’m not really interested; I don’t care what you do as long as whoever you do it with is of age and willing. That being said, California is asking some people to prove that they’re gay so their companies can qualify for certain government contracts. Why? Because if there are set-asides for gay-owned businesses, someone might simply claim to be bisexual and get some of those contracts. How can you prove they’re lying? The state has a checklist to make sure recipients of gay set-asides are gay enough, which means we finally found some fraud Democrats are against.” [editor’s note: It reminds me of when conservatives were claiming that jobsite quotas would mean daily blowjobs for the foreman – SAT] (06/18/26)
- The Tripartite University
Source: Law & Liberty
by Ronald W Dworkin“A separate division for social activism would at least allow for truth in advertising.” (06/18/26)
- The Libertarian Angle, 06/18/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Tyranny of a National Security State, Foreign Interventionism.” (06/18/26)
- Nonzero, 06/18/26
Source: bloggingheads.tv
“The World After the Iran War | Robert Wright & Joshua Landis.” (06/18/26)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 06/18/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Who Caused The Threat to ‘Economic Catastrophe?'” (06/18/26)